Further Reading

We fought, we traded, we braved witch space—and we’re excited about what’s to come.

AUSTIN, TEXAS—We’ve already spent quite a bit of time talking about Elite: Dangerous, one of two crowdfunded, high-profile space combat simulators currently under development. However, as much as I would have liked to do so, I couldn’t take a quick day trip over to actually visit the Elite team in the UK while they were working. Visiting the Star Citizen team, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Cloud Imperium Games maintains an office just outside of Austin, Texas, just a few hours away from home.

So during the last week of June, I loaded up my car for the quick road trip across the blazing Texas summer prairie to poke my nose into things, learning how the game is coming along and meeting with some of the folks who are busy spending the more than $48 million dollars raised so far in Star Citizen’s mammoth crowdfunding effort. Ars last caught up with Cloud Imperium at PAX East in April 2014 at the unveiling of the game’s Arena Commander dogfighting module. Though Arena Commander took a bit longer than anticipated to actually release, I’d finally gotten some stick time and was eager to talk to the developers about the progress being made on the title.

Enlarge/ This enormous logo adorns the wall on one of the office's hallways, bearing the surname of game designer legend Chris Roberts. (There's no logo for "Hutchinson Transgalactic Amalgamated Megacorp" yet, but I've got Aurich working with some sketches.)

Lee Hutchinson

There was another reason for wanting to visit Cloud Imperium, though: it's sort of a pilgrimage for any '80s-era gamer, because the man behind Star Citizen is none other than the legendary Chris Roberts. Sadly, while we tried to arrange the visit so that Roberts’ and my paths would cross, we couldn’t quite line up schedules. Nonetheless, for someone like me who spent his childhood playing Chris Roberts' games, just visiting his design studio was like taking a field trip to Mecca.

Warning: Nostalgia incoming!

In 1990, Austin-based Origin Systems published Wing Commander, a space combat simulator that kicked the nascent genre square in the stomach. Beyond the innovative (for the time) sprite-based graphics and optional Soundblaster-compatible digitized sound, the game had an actual for-real story—the player took on the role of the game’s main character and became the protagonist in a complex set of branching missions, where the overall course of an interstellar war hinged on your successes… or failures.

A screengrab from the original Wing Commander. Look at all those pixels!

Wing Commander was designed and produced primarily by then 22-year-old Roberts, and it would go on to spawn four direct sequels, a highly regarded spin-off series (the Privateer games), several tie-in games, and even a jet-based flight simulator (Strike Commander). It also cemented Roberts as one of the original cadre of 1990s "rock star" game designers, along with other luminaries like John Romero, Tim Schafer, and fellow Origin alum Richard Garriott.

Wing Commander II improved on WC1 with more cinematic cutscenes, including this one, which is the inevitable part in the game where they reference the game's title.

As a fledgling gamer at the time, I lived for new Roberts titles—anyone who grew up playing PC games in the 1990s knows that a new Origin game meant it was time to upgrade your entire computer so that you could play properly. No game in the series caused as much of a stir as 1994’s Wing Commander III, which not only left sprites behind for (software-rendered) 3D spaceships, but it also included four CDs of full motion video, starring Mark Hamill.

Sadly, though, as the '90s waned and the 2000s dawned, space combat games fell out of vogue (even though Wing Commander IV's six CDs and sprawling plot topped the third game by a considerable margin). At their heyday, LucasArts’ X-Wing series and Volition’s Freespace games rounded out Origin’s Wing Commander and Privateer titles to make a holy trinity of space-based combat. But a few years after that, the game landscape was barren and focused squarely on first-person titles. There have been a few stand-out space combat games in the last 15 years, but nothing is even remotely in the same galaxy. However, any pendulum swings over time. And last year's two crowdfunding campaigns led to the development of a pair of titles that each could revive what has become a totally moribund genre (whether Star Citizen or David Braben's Elite: Dangerous).

214 Reader Comments

Something that doens't get a lot of attention is that the multiplayer aspect isn't just following the straight MMO model, but also allows private servers. In fact one of the items you can buy from them is a modding manual that will cover setting up a pserv with custom rules. I'm mostly interested in the single-player aspects but I'm also planning on setting up a pserv for myself and a handful of others to play around in, as I did with Roberts' previous game Freelancer.

I played Eve Online for many years so I'm well aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of a scifi MMO, and it's very refreshing to find someone willing to give the users what they want rather than one person or team's vision of what ought to be.

Hi Lee, nice article. It's good to get a look at how our backer dollars are doing I just want to point out that 'Q&A' is what GM's, Executives and my dad who just don't know any better call testing. The rest of us properly refer to that as QA - Quality Assurance.

Editor Moonshark says:

I miss tie fighter so much. Compared with it games of today are for idiots. You had to keep track of so many things. My theory why space Sims died is because they stopped using joysticks. Playing a space Sim with a mouse simply sucks. By far not as immersion and the core game play sucks so you need to make up for it with gimmicks.

Unfortunately you will not get millions of people to buy a joystick again so you have to target the game for a mouse. And then it will suck.

I miss tie fighter so much. Compared with it games of today are for idiots. You had to keep track of so many things. My theory why space Sims died is because they stopped using joysticks. Playing a space Sim with a mouse simply sucks. By far not as immersion and the core game play sucks so you need to make up for it with gimmicks.

Unfortunately you will not get millions of people to buy a joystick again so you have to target the game for a mouse. And then it will suck.

If you haven't already, give X3: Terran Conflict a spin. Joystick action, hardcore economics, did I mention it's available without any DRM? Do make sure you're running the very latest version as developer Egosoft has a long history of horrendous launches followed by 1-2 years of bugfixes and new content.

Are there any indications as to whether the game will deliver the promised scope and depth? $50m is enough money to do it; have they managed to scale up to the headcount necessary to deliver?

At last count they have over 260 people working on the game. Thats both internal and external people. So yea they do. But to be honest even if they only deliver 75% of what's been promised thats still a lot of content to play with.

I get the impression that '2015' is a very optimistic estimate given the massive scope of what they're trying to achieve. Speaking as a backer myself, I hope CIG takes however long they need to make it right, even if it means waiting several years. The potential of a game like this is huge, but so is the potential disappointment if they release it too soon and it doesn't live up to expectations.

I'm glad I backed this way back when, though honestly I don't keep as up on it as I once did, I'm still looking forward to it, I really miss my space sims, but there is only so long I can hang out for a game, better to let the dust settle and be surprised when I get an email about the gaming being finished.

I get the impression that '2015' is a very optimistic estimate given the massive scope of what they're trying to achieve. Speaking as a backer myself, I hope CIG takes however long they need to make it right, even if it means waiting several years. The potential of a game like this is huge, but so is the potential disappointment if they release it too soon and it doesn't live up to expectations.

Agreed.

It's more important to me though that they get it right and meet the majority of the promised capabilities of the game than it is that they meet some arbitrary deadline.

I'd rather the release version be polished and bug free than early. That could mean longer betas, development cycles, and maybe more funding needed.

I find myself more and more excited for titles coming from smaller, more nimble studios/publishers. Star Citizen, Divinity: OS, The Witcher 3, Elite: Dangerous and No Man's Sky are games I am (was, for D :OS) looking forward to. Another twitchy FPS from EA? Yawn. Football Game 20XX? Oh look, they re-skinned FG:20X(X-1). Imagination, passion and daring are the critical components to a truly superb game, and these are the very things these small(er) studios have in spades.

However, as much as I would have liked to do so, I couldn’t take a quick day trip over to actually visit the Elite team in the UK while they were working.

I have thought for quite some time that you need a reporter in the EU, to be honest. You report a lot about things happening in the EU, but sometimes you miss a lot of nuance that only a reporter in Germany or France would pick up. I wouldn't recommend a UK reporter though, because we in the UK are often as blinkered as you lot sometimes about the goings on on the continent while Germans and the French have a fairly good understanding of what goes on in the UK.

"You might be a level 90 Rock Biter in World of Neverending Story Online, but you’re only one of thousands of other level 90 Rock Biters. The kinds of things you can do that will have a real effect in the game’s overall structure and story are rare (if they exist at all). "

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

If it were visible to everyone, then persistent game worlds would immediately overflow with enormous indelible penis renderings. If if were visible just to you, it's kind of pointless.

I remember reading (and it may have been long enough ago that it was in an actual printed gaming magazine) that the number of players who chose Flint over Rachel was incredibly low—like less than ten percent.

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

If it were visible to everyone, then persistent game worlds would immediately overflow with enormous indelible penis renderings. If if were visible just to you, it's kind of pointless.

You missed my point. I specifically said visible only to you. Yes it's a cheat, but it would give you a sense of making your mark, a persistent mark, on the gameworld.

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

If it were visible to everyone, then persistent game worlds would immediately overflow with enormous indelible penis renderings. If if were visible just to you, it's kind of pointless.

I believe the EVE Online / CCP devs remarked this phenomenon as "Time To Penis", as in the amount of time needed for a player to render some sort of phallic depiction in game once given the means to.

I remember reading (and it may have been long enough ago that it was in an actual printed gaming magazine) that the number of players who chose Flint over Rachel was incredibly low—like less than ten percent.

What can I say, I'm one in a million. Well... One in ten...

I don't doubt that most people chose Rachel, though I'm wondering how they arrived at that number - in games that regularly use an internet connection (like e.g. Mass Effect) you can easily get this information, but in this case it would almost have to be self-reported somehow. (My main reason for commenting was that I liked the image caption)

Given that the bulk of the work going into a large game like this is platform agnostic, it boggles the mind that a project with such lofty goals is only "considering" Linux and Mac versions.

I'm fairly sure Chris said at GDC that he was doing Linux. Mac is unknown as the hardware and drivers are more rockey... Does it even support GL 4.3/4.4? Pretty sure CryEngine requires one of the two for its upcoming Linux port.

Nice writeup. As a backer its always interesting to see others views. As someone mentiined above bot following it at fanatically as before, but then again im just outaide the multiplayer bracket so maybe that will change in a few weeks haha.

To expand upon a point that was made about there being a disconnect between the developement process and player expectations, as both a backer and an (indie) dev its hard sometimes to read the forums, the amount of people who dont have a clue as to how a game is built and iterated upon is staggering - or perhaps those few idiots are just very very vocal haha.

I remember reading (and it may have been long enough ago that it was in an actual printed gaming magazine) that the number of players who chose Flint over Rachel was incredibly low—like less than ten percent.

Wow, statistical anomaly about to happen here. But I went with Flint, even though it did mean no missiles for a bit.Jennifer MacDonald>>>Ginger Lynn (although I realize there's no accounting for taste)

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

If it were visible to everyone, then persistent game worlds would immediately overflow with enormous indelible penis renderings. If if were visible just to you, it's kind of pointless.

Pretty much. Destructible environment in a MMO? I'm not sure I would enjoy playing in a world made completely out of rubble and dead NPCs.

But what really bugs me is how much trouble I'm having waiting for Star Citizen to release. I really should be more jaded about these sorts of things by now, but when someone offers me pretty much all the things I couldn't get from EVE in one place, I hear Pavlov's bell ringing in my ears.

I'm a bit nervous that they are trying to build a state-of-the-art MMORPG but there doesn't *seem* to be anybody on the team with the experience of that - more just experienced people from the earlier games. They will have amibitions and ideas, but building successful MMORPGs seems to require some very hard-won skills that they probably won't have. It almost seems like the only route to success is to have several failed MMORPGs first.

Page 2 with the image "The Cloud Imperium conference room is fully equipped with all manner of fancy electronic entertainment...". PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox 360 and One, High end Desktop........ and then a Dell Dimension 4300. From 2001. What are they using that for?

I'm a bit nervous that they are trying to build a state-of-the-art MMORPG but there doesn't *seem* to be anybody on the team with the experience of that - more just experienced people from the earlier games. They will have amibitions and ideas, but building successful MMORPGs seems to require some very hard-won skills that they probably won't have. It almost seems like the only route to success is to have several failed MMORPGs first.

Have I missed anyone/anything?

I'm quite certain I saw that they had hired somebody from Blizzard who previously worked on World of Warcraft for quite a long time. I can't recall his name but I'm 100% sure of this.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure they're aware of the need for expertise in the MMO (*not* MMORPG) area. But also, it's not a bad thing for the team to not be overloaded with people from existing MMOs, since none of them are of the same genre or offer the same kind of experience that Star Citizen is going for.

I miss tie fighter so much. Compared with it games of today are for idiots. You had to keep track of so many things. My theory why space Sims died is because they stopped using joysticks. Playing a space Sim with a mouse simply sucks. By far not as immersion and the core game play sucks so you need to make up for it with gimmicks.

Unfortunately you will not get millions of people to buy a joystick again so you have to target the game for a mouse. And then it will suck.

True. Although the joystick has slipped back in unnoticed, or what is a controller for?

edit: it will be interesting to try this type of game streaming from my PC to my spanking-new Shield Tablet, once I get the controller (damn you, Amazon back-order), which apparently can map the sticks to PC controls somehow.

I'm a bit nervous that they are trying to build a state-of-the-art MMORPG but there doesn't *seem* to be anybody on the team with the experience of that - more just experienced people from the earlier games. They will have amibitions and ideas, but building successful MMORPGs seems to require some very hard-won skills that they probably won't have. It almost seems like the only route to success is to have several failed MMORPGs first.

Have I missed anyone/anything?

I'm sure they have more people than the 5 everyone constantly sees. Anyway you can make a good MMO even if you never made one or have people that never made one. Look at Blizzard with World of Warcraft. Everyone were saying that they can't beat the 300,000 subscribers that Everquest had. They never made a MMO before. Now they are the king.

Why is Homeworld not mentioned. No you cannot personally dogfight an individual ship, but there is the overall strategic game which provided just as much of an awesome space combat simulator. It seems weird to ignore this other smash hit from the 90's.

I always wondered why MMORPGs didn't have something like persistent individualised environment damage. Eg you go past the main base for the MMORPG and you fire at a corner of the structure. A hole or scar is left on it and you get hauled off by the cops. After dealing with the consequences of that, every time you re-enter the MMORPG, the scar is still there. It's a visible, lasting indication of your impact on the MMORPG world. Would be in a different place for everyone. (a byte in the character file tracks where that scar is) Other possibilities abound - a quest to create a new tower on the main HQ - and it bears your name / coat of arms on the outside, proudly visible to you (but not to anyone else).

Maybe I'm just out of touch.

If it were visible to everyone, then persistent game worlds would immediately overflow with enormous indelible penis renderings. If if were visible just to you, it's kind of pointless.

You missed my point. I specifically said visible only to you. Yes it's a cheat, but it would give you a sense of making your mark, a persistent mark, on the gameworld.

But as soon as you try to tell someone "Hey, see that over there? I did that," they will have no clue what you are talking about and your illusion of having made a mark on the world will be broken.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.